In this video I bring you along as I knock out the front pads and rotors on an old Cadillac Escalade (Chevy Tahoe) I might even share a few tips and tricks along the way.
-Enjoy!
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Hey there, viewers welcome back to the south main hall channel, that's a 2005 cadillac, it's the escalade and it's got the big six. So apparently it's a new vehicle to the guy picked it up. I think she's southern, because it's not well because it's not broken half on the left. That's how we know that uh pretty clean needs a bunch of work, some breaks, it's got a bad hydro boost and i don't know what else we got a pile of parts over there on the floor.

He wants a bunch of service stuff done all the fluids. Change things like that: it's got a coolant leak, so i'm gon na put the milk machine on this, because that's what milk machines sound like and we'll try to get as many videos out of it as we can. So i think today, we'll get started by whacking out some breaks and then kind of move on and just see where life leads us, oh whoa. Ah, we need to make sure this little guy can compress.

The other side was locked up tighter than a drum. You couldn't budge that sucker. I think this one's okay, because we're able to push in with a screwdriver yeah this side feels fine and going in nice, make sure you've got enough room in the master cylinder. You know make sure it's not filled with the tippy top and or open your bleeder to your choice.

If you read gm service data, it just tells you to push it back in as most service data does very rarely. Do you see it where they tell you to open the bleeder wow? Oh so good, your daily dose of brake clean, your weirdos, you guys love your brakes and, if i'm admitting so do i in the fluid film allow me some fluid film, the cure-all product. We got some rotors here from napper uh, not a sponsor, and let me tell you right now, as of january, in the year 2022 speaking to you from the past, our rotors are hard to obtain they're getting difficult to obtain along with several other parts, but in The aftermarket world brake rotors are what we're seeing problem with brake, rotors and oil filters of all things. So we don't get to use the variety that we normally do.

We are using use what you can get now: silk seams a little bit frustrating but for the most part we're able to get them. It's just you don't get them as quickly as you could. So. If you've watched any of the past 800 break videos that we've done you'll know that i threw this into sandblaster, we cleaned off the rusty junk, although this one wasn't horrible, uh must be from florida and that's all clean.

Now, however, in the past i have mentioned to you folks, if you've had time or if you have time, which often times we don't in the shop, it's one thing we're always running out of this time, but today it's a special day today we have time to Do something that we talk about, but we usually don't do wow. That's quite a lead up to say why don't you put a little black paint on there before you put the grease on it? You know what i mean. So that's what we're going to do. Spritzer with a little brake clean, don't have to be fancy, give it a little blow for good luck, and then i found some rust-oleum gloss, protective enamel superior coverage and durability.
Uh, not a sponsor uh. It's just what i found laying over there by josh and uh. So we're gon na use that i shook it up, we're just going to give it a little spritz on our calper mounting our hardware mounting location here in the northeast in the rust belt. The problem with brake pads oftentimes is the rust builds up underneath the hardware it swells up.

The hardware locks the pad up. So that's a very, very common issue. There's been a lot of advancements in um caliper brake hardware. You know the hardware itself will be stainless.

It'll have this: you know silent guard technology, this black coating they put on it. You know everything in an effort to try to slow down this corrosion. I've mentioned in the past that if you have time, if, once you clean all the rust off your bracket, if you have time to where you can paint it, let it dry for a little bit then put the grease on. It then put the bracket on and i think we can slow it down a little more.

So in this instance i'll show you the example of. If i had time what i would do something like that, if i had lots of time i'd blast the whole thing and paint the whole thing, but we don't have that kind of time. Well, we're sitting here watching paint dry, we're going to pull the pins out, wipe all the goo off them. You know it's kind of interesting service data mentioned that thread, locking these before reinstalling.

I don't know if i've ever removed a set, even oem had seen thread lock on them. So i thought that was kind of bizarre, but you know what we're pretty by the book type people here. So i'm gon na take the black paint on the boots. Just it's making me crazy, wipe that off a little bit.

I want to look like a hack there we go and then now we've done that let's find some silicone. So we're going to take a little bit of the super loop, silicone lubricating brake grease with silicone food grade. Dielectric clean nsh, h1 registered well uh we're just going to squeeze a little snake out of there in the hole there we go and then we're just going to make sure that we have a little bit on each one of our pins here and we'll just kind Of smooch them around in there, oh she's, nice and lubricated do the same thing to this. One we'll get a little bit of lube up on the pin, and then we wait.

I don't know how long it takes paint to dry, but we'll go. Do something else for a little bit we'll use a little crc silveramic, it's ceramic fortified brake system grease extreme temperature range from 50 below zero to 3000 degrees fahrenheit by golly. Your rotors might turn to liquid. But this grease won't that's their actual motto: uh we're gon na stick some grease on the inside of the caliper here.

This is our practice as usual. This is going to cut down on not just rust and corrosion, but also noise. It's a very common practice. Amongst many oems times, if they have removable shims on the pads, particularly on toyotas you'll, see it where they grease in between each layer of shims and the caliper face.
You don't have to go cray-cray, make sure if there's a bunch of dirt and debris and rust and junk you clean that out. First same thing with the piston faces: we're gon na. Do the piston faces if they're phenolic, aka plastic, you don't necessarily have to do this. We always do, but you don't have to these ones.

Are. I think these are phenolic with a metal ring on them. There's that now hey girl, i guess we can just go bug. Mrs though, what's up mrs though you're super dark, hi, luna hi pumpkin is another running eyes, your eye, a little boogery huh, they look pretty dry to me.

We're going to take some of our lube. Just in case we're wrong we're just going to put it on the back of the hardware. I guess you could do it either way. You could do it out of hardware.

You could wipe it on the bracket. If you put it on the hardware, you know it goes everywhere, it needs, and nowhere is that it don't. I suppose this is the main area in which you want to prevent rust. Jacking is right up through here.

This is where it would give the pad the big squeeze, so we've got that one done make sure you put them on the right side. I know there's some folks from the southern areas or from sunny climates, where they don't use salt, and this is seems kind of like nonsense. Well, you'd be right, but in our climate this is almost necessary if you want to get the full life out of your pads, so we'll click that little guy on i like so now. There are some guys.

I've seen him comment on our videos. Ask us why we don't grease the ears of the pads. You certainly can. We can even do it in this video being that we're pulling out all the stops.

We can stick a little grease up here and a little grease right here where they slide get the whole thing here. You don't have to go hog wild, there's that now your pads on these chevrolets uh. You got your one with your double dong or squealer. That's gon na be the outside pad.

Okay, now you've got one with a single donger. That's gon na be the inside. However, it's only gon na one pad is gon na. Have the squealer here, the other one's gon na, have the squealer here, but it's only gon na fit the bracket one way, there's only a relief cut in the bracket for it to fit.

One way you can see how we've got the space down here for it. If we use the one that had the squealer over here, it would not fit so technically you really can't mess these pads up technically, however, i've seen them come in where people have just you know, chopped it off to make it fit. So if it doesn't fit, don't force it, the pad should move nice and smooth if it doesn't they're either really crappy pads or you've got too much rust in there still so bring our loaded bracket assembly. Now these babies move smooth, so we're going to try to do this without letting it hit the floor too many times so we'll slide that bad boy right up there we'll squeeze our pads.
Now the bolts here, i've already put the thread lock on sticking babies in there. I think they were torqued down to 100 and something or other or snug, whichever torque spec you use. The main thing is you don't want it to fall off? There's that one and there's that one and being that we have our kelp are all prepped. I did put a little thread locker on these, which i thought was a little unusual, but that's what cadillac tells us to do we're going to take this one here and slide that, like so and then we'll slip her down and pull this one back out line Up your rubber slip, it right in there like that and we'll tighten these bad boys up.

Usually these ones that take the torx bit here, the t55. They can be a mother lover in the northeast uh, getting these suckers out they're, so rotted and they're kind of a tapered cut on the edge. So they don't. You don't have a lot of purchase with a torx bit i mean torx.

Bits are silly as it is, but you know these aren't square cut to the end, so you get one little slip and it's junk uh. That's it folks, you're all done technically, once it's all on. You know you should be able to have some good movement and your calipers be nice and free, at least until you pump up the pedal and that's all it's left to really do pump up the pedal. Don't slam her to the floor about two thirds of the way? Is all you want until the pedal is nice and stiff fill up your brake fluid if it's down low and then take it for a shake.

However, in this video we're not going to do that, because we've still got to finish some other stuff, we've got the brake on the other side same process that side over there needs a caliper and if i'm not, i'm being honest, it's already done. Okay, so we put a caliper over there and then we've got to go on and scoot and do the rear brakes. I think we're going to do a brake, fluid flush on it, so we're just going to leave it here on the lift check out the other videos coming up on the escalade. If you want to make sure you don't miss them, subscribe the bell ring and all that going on there in the comment section, you know the drill just from our viewers.

If i can do it, you can do it thanks for watching.

By EricO

14 thoughts on “Cadillac escalade chevy tahoe : front brake job”
  1. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars scott johnson says:

    might want to talk to customer about is, on his new cat-a-lack is to make sure the cat-o-latic converters are in good shape.. you do have an expert in the shop… a.k.a. luna the kitty i believe… she could purrrrr her way into his heart to get the ok for the check!!! just make sure if you get the job that you share some of the profits with luna… hahaha..

  2. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Spencer Duquette says:

    i just worked on my wifes car this weekend. both rear brakes on a 2004 Chevrolet Malibu were locked up solid. tossed 2 reman calipers at it. problem solved.

  3. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars J. Cooper says:

    My 04 Silverado crew, once 1 caliper goes, the other 3 are not far behind…done all this to mine..that old consider upgrading the trans cooler, to get as many miles as you can out of the crap tranny, me love fluid film…upgrade to drill and slotted for much better stopping power.

  4. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Ryan Bond says:

    Everyone getting all excited about a brake job! Gee Mr. O, you should add some sultry music and make this into a ASMR video?๐Ÿคฃ

    All good though, as a bearing aficionado I feel the same about bearing videos!

  5. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Larry Reagan says:

    Being from northern Indiana we always loaded the bit hole with high temp grease as well so next pad change there's still some bit teeth left, great video as always and keep up the good work!

  6. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars BG 45 says:

    I've been doing my own brakes for years. The worst part for me was getting the casting clean enough under the little steel stampings. 3/4 ton Suburban rears were hard to get at because of the leaf spring and working sitting on the floor. At 70 years and fat the floor is too far away now. I need to find someone in northern Indiana I trust.

  7. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars All Noyz says:

    I saw a video once where some guy was confidently putting silver anti-seize into the slide pins…Yikes!!!
    It's so simple and yet…
    Thanks.

  8. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Latarian HoodRat says:

    One lesson I learned from you was removing all the rust from the calipers! It's faster than filing the pad ears down so they fit……. ๐Ÿ˜‰

  9. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Edwin Semidey says:

    I enjoy watching you do All kinds of work , Didn't understand what you were talking about You Tubber's and bringing their vehicles to you . If they are Dumb enough to travel cross country, Their is NO Discount and the Travel cost is on them. You are Just a Good Mechanic Not a Miracle worker, And I truly enjoy watching your Videos .

  10. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars James Devr says:

    I've always had success in pushing back the caliper pistons by simply removing the master cylinder cap. This allows the brake fluid to move back from the caliper while allowing any air trapped in the master cylinder to escape. Otherwise, any trapped air in the master reservoir will prevent easy retraction of the caliper. So far, I've never had to open a bleeder screw to retract calipers.Of course, there could always end up being a first time.

  11. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Jeffery Bye says:

    Greetings Eric O from Pennsville NJ..Another great educational video and commentary..you never disappoint in anything y'all do..๐Ÿ‘๐Ÿค™๐Ÿค˜

  12. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars B-MAN says:

    Cute kitty, I had to put mine down today, 19 year old Maine coon. Thanks for the video Eric something to take my mind off things.

  13. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Jac McCauley says:

    Never thought about applying the lube to the hardware instead of the caliper bracket, might give that a try the next time I need to to do brakes

  14. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars El Cheapo says:

    I still can't believe marketing departments were able to convince the car buying public to pay many thousands of dollars more for the same vehicle with different badges and fancy taillights.

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